Ken Berger of CBSSports.com with a seriously brilliant column: “But what happened instead? The players and union officials took the bait that Stern had so cleverly planted on the end of a hook early Sunday. Instead, a defeated Fisher acknowledged the inevitable and Kessler, the union’s flame-throwing attorney, launched a roomful of red meat onto the table for the hard-line agents and star players who are fed up with this charade to devour on their path to the mutually assured destruction of union decertification. And if the season gets blown up in the aftermath of these ultimatums, threats and tantrums, it will be the players’ doing. This didn’t have to be. And it still doesn’t.”

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop: “Kessler explains the reasoning for the mechanism is because no union wants to let employers address workers directly. You don’t want your opponents to have direct access to your constituents. The fully informed committee has an obligation to keep bad deals from the rank and file, who have entrusted the process to them. This protects players from accepting an offer that might sound good to them, but would, in the judgment of those who have analyzed it most thoroughly, actually be bad news. So if the players are to accept the NBA’s offer, they will do so over the objection of their representatives.” Keep Reading…

When David Stern sat down to give a press conference at 12:45 central time Saturday night, I really had no idea what to expect. More of the same? Tempered optimism? Disheartening negativity? A duet with Adam Silver singing the bass part on “Reunited”?

Probably the last thing I expected was for Stern to sit down and basically explain the league’s entire proposal to the players and then add that if they don’t take that deal by Wednesday, the next proposal will be infinitely worse.

Yow.

Stern said it wasn’t an ultimatum. But that’s exactly what it is. Take it or leave it, players. And if you leave it, be ready to put your money where your mouth is. Because the season will be in serious jeopardy.

The federal mediator put out six proposals, or “what-ifs”, for the two sides to consider. According to Stern, the league has adopted five of those. One of those being a solution to the torturous disagreement on Basketball Related Income. The NBA’s proposal includes a “band” that would pay the players up to 51 percent if projected revenues are met and as low as 49 if they are not. And if revenues exceed projections, the players would get 57 percent of the overflow. So if the league’s projection — which is 4.5 percent growth — is something like $4.5 billion for next season (or whatever) and the league brings in $5 billion, the players would get 57 percent of that extra $500 million. Or at least that’s the way I understood. It was very confusing you see.

But why lay it all out there and issue this deadline? Because Stern’s brilliant, that’s why. Keep Reading…

The NBA and NBPA are set to meet Saturday but as Henry Abbott of TrueHoop writes, the union better be ready to deal or the NBA’s offer might just get worse: “Which is why some owners are agitating not just for the NBA to reconsider walking the offer down from 50 percent, but also reintroducing what the league calls a “flex cap,” which the union calls an over-my-dead-body “hard cap.” If the NBA’s next offer is anything like that, things will get incredibly ugly. In other words, while the league and the union are busily not making a deal, they could be busy destroying one.”

On a trading card, at least. Panini American, who does not make sandwiches, believe it or not, is an Italian card company that purchased Donruss a few years ago.

The NBA’s got an exclusive deal with them for trading cards, so the company decided to take advantage of the buzz around KD’s flag football performance in Stillwater. The Redskins need a quarterback — I mean, John Beck and Rex Grossman? — and we all saw KD toss four touchdown passes and run for another two. So why not?

And just to take our little project one more logical step, we asked Beckett Media Senior Market Analyst Rob Springs to speculate on the secondary-market value such Durant cards might have. His estimate: Between $150 and $200.

Site news: You may have noticed but I’m trying a new commenting system out. It’s not all that crazy, but it has one excellent feature: real-time commenting. Meaning no more refreshing to see if someone responded to you about how Eric Maynor should start. You don’t have to re-register or anything, but you can register a LiveFyre account to sync your Facebook profile or Twitter to it. Any feedback is great.

OKC dropped to 0-2 with a 95-93 loss in Phoenix, pretend computer says: “The Thunder fell to 0-2 with another tough loss on the road in yet another nail-biter on an evening jam-packed with them. Vince Carter, who was not bought out of his contract in our magical universe, scored with 2:19 to play to bring the Suns within 93-92. Then no one scored for 1:32. In fact, Oklahoma City didn’t score after the 2:41 mark. Finally, Carter hit a three with 47 seconds to play, putting Phoenix up by two. Russell Westbrook missed for Oklahoma City. Phoenix got the ball back and ran down the clock until Channing Frye was hit with an offensive foul with 11 seconds remaining. With one final chance, all the Thunder could muster was a desperation shot by Serge Ibaka at the buzzer. After going 8-of-27 in the opener, Westbrook shot 5-of-15 from the floor. Carter led Phoenix with 19 points and hit four three-pointers. In reality, there is no way Carter will play for the Suns this season–whenever it begins–but on Wednesday, fans of the virtual Suns were glad he was still around.” Keep Reading…

The NBA started a Twitter account recently — @NBA_Labor — in an effort to combat what they deem as misinformation about the current labor negotiations. The account only has tweeted four times — once to Henry Abbott of TrueHoop, once to Nate Jones (who is KD’s social media guru), once to The Sporting News and once to Nazr Mohammed and Charlie Villanueva.

Mohammed, who has been a very strong and opinionated voice for the players during this labor issue, didn’t really like what he called “harassment” coming at him from the league over this.

So what happened? Basically, the NBA Labor feed was trying to correct something Charlie Villanueva tweeted about the lockout (something about the real BRI being 46 or 47 percent after expenses), but included Mohammed in it and then the NBA’s account, which has some three million followers, retweeted it. For what reason? I don’t know. But as Tom Ziller said, that proved to be a mistake.

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports set fire to labor talks: “This union is threatening to implode, the push and pull of people wanting to cut a deal and those willing to keep warring over the final percentage points. Within the NBPA, the frustration with Hunter is this: Hunter knows where the deal will be made, but he’s engaged in a smear campaign to frame Fisher as a sellout to the league. For Hunter, the end game is simple: Divide and conquer, and ultimately try keep his own job beyond this labor agreement. This is a lousy deal for the players, and Hunter wants the blame everywhere else. Yes, this has created doubts about Fisher, but it’s hurt Hunter far more. Once, he had the stars on his side, and that’s rapidly dissipating.”

Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: “Sadly, a person close to Hunter said Tuesday the union chief remains “pretty dug in,” and it’s clear who’s giving the marching orders not to go a penny below 52 percent. Look no further than the infamous letter that seven high-powered agents sent to their clients on Oct. 3, strongly urging the players not to make any further concessions beyond 52 percent of BRI.” Keep Reading…